Raging egos and broken bones: why the Stone Roses ghosted Glastonbury

In June 1995, weeks before the Stone Roses were due to headline Saturday night at Glastonbury, the band placed an ad in the NME. It consisted of an X-ray of the shattered collarbone of John Squire, the group’s mercurial guitarist.

Squire had sustained the injury crashing his mountain bike in San Francisco on June 1, the morning after a gig at the Fillmore. Glastonbury was to have been their grand come-back – the first UK show in five years. And now a freak accident had spoiled the homecoming.

The Stone Roses at Glastonbury, which marked its 25th anniversary this year, is one of the great what-ifs in the history of both Nineties British rock and of the festival itself. By the summer of 1995, the Roses had been in a death spiral for some time. Accelerating the decline was the departure of drummer Alan “Reni” Wren, shortly before that fateful US tour during which Squire had his biking mishap.

Ego clashes between Squire and singer Ian Brown were further contributing to the sense of doom around the Roses. During the drawn-out recording of their patchy second LP, Second Coming, Squire had struggled with the rock star disease of cocaine addiction.

You could almost hear the cocaine – the red-eyed excess – on Second Coming. Brown, who’d recently had a child, was uncomfortable with the histrionic, Led Zeppelin-soaked vibe. And he felt Squire was trying to sideline him (his paranoia heightened by the fact Squire was taking solo meetings with their record label, Geffen). Bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield, was, for his part, still struggling to process the death of his father.

The only bright spot had been the recruitment of new drummer Robbie Maddox, a level-headed 25 year old hired days after Reni’s exit. Touring America he’d been appalled by the chaos in the Rose’s camp. Maddox had even threatened to follow Reni and quit when his drum kit fell apart mid-show in Los Angeles (his pleas for a drum-stand ignored by road crew largely drawn from Brown and Squire’s old mates in Manchester).

Amid such disorganisation and with Second Coming widely agreed to suffer from a crippling bout of difficult second album syndrome, news of Squire’s biking accident was met with rolled eyes back home. Many felt the whole thing was a wheeze by a dysfunctional group desperate to wriggle out of Glastonbury: a date with destiny they were arguably in no fit state to fulfil.

Hence the advert and the X-Ray of Squire’s collarbone. The Roses wanted their fans to know that they weren’t making it up. It did little to quell the whisperings. “People don’t believe the Stone Roses any more,” observed a piece in the NME. Billboard in the US had already reported the band as having broken up. They had certainly broken down.

For Glastonbury, Squire’s incapacitation just weeks before the festival was obviously a seismic setback. Michael Eavis, Glastonbury co-creator, scrambled to find a replacement. Among those asked were Blur, Primal Scream and Rod Stewart. Meanwhile Slash from Gun ’n’ Roses reportedly offered to step in for Squire and play with the Roses – a scenario about as plausible as Axl Rose fronting The Smiths. Brown and company demurred and in the end the coveted slot went to Pulp.

“It is all a bit last-minute, but we’re used to that sort of thing,” Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker said. “You’ll find us in Yellow Pages, actually, under Bands For Hire. We’re the super-subs of modern music. And no, I don’t think we’ll be doing any Stone Roses covers.”

The performance was widely regarded as a triumph. Pulp’s rendition of their new anthem, Common People, in particular, was immediately seen as a crowning moment as Glastonbury marked its quarter-century. The Roses were out of sight and completely out of mind.

The story has a curious coda, however. The Roses managed somehow to not fall apart and returned rejuvenated from a triumphant tour of Japan (though the raised spirits proved fleeting – Squire would leave the following year). And they finally had their big festival coming out moment over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Not at Glastonbury but at Féile 95 at Páirc Uí Chaoimh GAA stadium in Cork.

Cork and the Roses were perfect bedfellows in a way. Ireland’s second city has an “us against the world” pride/massive chip on shoulder similar to Manchester’s. And, just like Manchester, it was a hotbed of clubbing culture: the iconic Sweat night at Sir Henry’s occupied the same pivotal position as the Hacienda in Manchester. Perhaps sensing a connection Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays (who played Féile with Black Grape) would go so far as to move to rural Cork a few years later.

Glastonbury’s 1995 line-up has come to be seen as the ultimate Britpop “who’s who” (Oasis, PJ Harvey and Portishead all featured). But Féile 95, if anything, topped even Glasto. Blur headlined the Saturday night, teasing Oasis from the stage regarding their imminent chart showdown (Oasis would fill Páirc Uí Chaoimh the following summer).

Elastica played, too, with road-weary bassist Annie Holland quitting on the drive back to Cork Airport. Menswear, Britpop’s tragic show-ponies, were there, alongside the Boo Radleys, Paul Weller, The Verve, Sleeper, Lush and Dodgy. It was as if Camden had move en masse to the south coast of Ireland. Quite why nobody had invited Ocean Colour Scene or Echobelly is a mystery to this day.

Féile 95 was also where Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue performed together in public for the first time. Having attended all three days of the festival, I remember the moment clearly. Or, more precisely, I clearly remember missing the moment. My friends and I had gathered to watch Kylie but grew fed up after the first few songs and went off to Massive Attack instead. Only later did we discover we’d spurned the opportunity to see the Prince of Darkness himself, schlepping out to duet on Where The Wild Roses Grow.

None of us was going to miss the Roses though. They headlined the Sunday night and the sense of occasion was incredible. Cork had fleetingly become the centre of the rock universe in the pre-Britpop early Nineties. That was when the success of the Sultans of Ping and the Frank and Walters had led the music press to concoct a short-lived “Corkchester” movement.

“Phew - What a Corker!” headlines were ubiquitous in the NME and Melody Maker. A&R executives were flying into town with instructions to sign a band – any band. Cork City pulled off a very rock ’n roll 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich in Europe. And then the bubble inevitably popped.

But now that feeling of manifest destiny had returned. And when the Roses trooped out and Mani struck up opening bass riff of I Wanna Be Adored it was as if the world had stopped turning. “It’s the Stone F___ Roses” ran an NME headline afterwards – and it absolutely f______ was.

“It was the most enjoyable gig we’ve done,” Brown reflected. What we didn’t know was that, in going on late, the Roses had cut into the set time of techno brothers Orbital. This had led to a heated standoff backstage between the two camps.

“It f______ irritated me because they ran over. Which meant our set was cut short,” Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll would tell me years later. “They had no consideration for anyone else. We had to set up behind the curtain and start playing as the crew was bringing our gear out…That was f______ annoying.”

Twenty six years on, my recollections are obviously a blur. Two memories stand out. The Roses’ incendiary set – their Glastonbury performance, but three months late – was one. The other was from earlier that afternoon. A friend and I were wandering through the dance tent, thrilled with ourselves for having smuggled in a litre of “bargain” vodka disguised as radioactively orange fizzy pop.

And then a diminutive figure, with an intense gaze and a sort of waddling gait, passed. It was Ian Brown, among his people.

He was pale, intense and rather tiny. And he didn’t seem nearly as strutting and confident as on stage. But he moved with great deliberation, his chin high. Perhaps he sensed summer 1995 would mark one of the Roses’ last great gigs before it all fell apart (the less said about their 2011 reunion the better). That it happened in Cork rather than Glastonbury was just a lucky turn for those of us there to witness it.